1 comments about A Quiet Courage: Per Anger, Wallenberg's Co-Liberator of Hungarian Jews.

1. Rarely do you have an opportunity to meet someone who has "made a difference in history." Ambassador Per Anger is just that sort of person. Elizabeth R. Skoglund touches on the thread that held people like Per Anger, Rauol Wallenberg and others together while they tried to help those escaping the Holocaust. For us now, we too can "make a difference".

3 comments about Conversations with Elie Wiesel.

1. Elie Wiesel here speaks with Richard Heffern on major questions of our moral and ethical life. The fourteen chapters of this work discuss such questions as "Am I My Brother's Keeper" " The Role of the Intellectual In Public Life" " The State: Its Proper Role in Our Life " " On Being Politically Correct" "Nationalism and Upheaval" " The Anatomy of Hate"
   "Taking Life Can it be an Act of Compassion?" " Making ourselves over in whose Image?" " The Mystic character of Memory" " Anti-Semitism"
   Heffern a veteran broadcaster is an extremely intelligent moderator. Wiesel is as always wise and humane . He for instance in the opening dialogue talks about the problem many of us face, of where to focus our attentions in a world in which there are so many problems, so much suffering, so much need for help. Wiesel the witness of the 'Shoah' whose book 'Night' perhaps more than any other made a wider publc feel the horror of the 'Holocaust' is not simply a spokesman for the Jewish people, but for all of Mankind. He is a person who cares and has done much to help. His description of his first efforts in Biafra shows once again how he extended his caring for all of mankind.
   Anyone who wishes to have real insight into the moral and political dilemnas facing Mankind today should read this outstanding book.



2. How does one review a book by Wiesel? He speaks the truth, is a modern day "righteous Jew", and makes one think of the meanings of life



3. Elie Wiesel is an extraordinary figure in history and literature. As a Jew who survived the Holocaust and horrors of the concentration camps when he was but a child, he has spent his life questioning the very nature of his faith and his fellow human beings. In "Conversations With Elie Wiesel" readers are given the opportunity to hear his viewpoint on a wide range of topics that concern America, and the entire world, today.
   
   These conversations have been honed from numerous interviews with Richard D. Heffner, moderator of the public television show "The Open Mind." Together these two men discuss religion, tolerance, hate, compassion, capital punishment - almost every so-called hot button that exists in the political, social and moral concerns of our world. Elie Wiesel proves himself to be a thoroughly intelligent man, who raises questions even while recognizing that some may never be answered. His distinct experiences and his Jewish faith play a role in all that he says or does.
   
   These conversations are interspersed with interludes that give true Wiesel fans insights into the inner workings of his mind. Wiesel argues for the necessary role of compassion in human interactions. We need to care about our brothers, in spite of our differences, if there is to be any peace and understanding within our world. He holds out hope for the day when everyone could come together and put aside all the differences and squabbles that separate us and tear us apart. This truly is a thought-provoking read for anyone interested in religion, philosophy, and the fate of our world.

No comments about Der Finfter zman: lider (The Fifth Season: Poems).

No comments about Maybe Tomorrow: A Hidden Child of the Holocaust.

No comments about To Hope or Die - From Warsaw Uprising to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp and after: Memoirs of a Survivor.

5 comments about Eichmann Interrogated: Transcripts From The Archives Of The Israeli Police.

1. Adolf Eichmann made many statements when interviewed, and this review only touches on a few topics. One of these is the personal philosophy of Eichmann, including his rejection of Christianity: "More and more I came to the conclusion that God can't possibly be as small as in the Bible stories. I thought I had found my own belief. And I read Schopenhauer, who says the way of religious faith is safer and the way of freedom is a dangerous way, which the individual must perpetually work out for himself. I said to myself: The God I believe in is greater than the Christian God." (p. 39).
   
   Eichmann also touches on the early days of the Nazi Party: "Yes, Herr Hauptmann, of course there was hatred of the Jews in it. But in those days there were lots of party members with Jewish relatives by blood or marriage. I myself knew an SS-Scharfuhrer who was a Jew...I said to him: Good God, man, there's nothing I can do for you. The only advice I can give you is: Clear out, go to Switzerland or somewhere else, because it's no good for you here, it's no good, it's hopeless." (p. 41).
   
   The idea of sending Europe's Jews to Madagascar has at times been mistakenly attributed to the Poles. In actuality, this idea goes back to one of the early pioneers of Zionism. As Eichmann explains: "I remembered Theodor Herzl's efforts to bring about a Jewish state, described by Adolf Bohm, and that at one time Herzl had considered plans for Madagascar." (p. 65). After being asked by interrogator Avner W. Less if he got the idea from a Polish commission that had visited Madagascar in 1937, Eichmann replied: "No, never, never, never. I got the idea from Theodor Herzl." (p. 69). Eichmann also denied knowledge of the conclusions of the Polish commission, which had found the whole idea impractical, as recounted by Less: "...this Polish commission...came to the conclusion that a maximum of fifteen thousand European families could be settled there, while certain members of the commission thought that figure far too high..." (p. 69).
   
   Eichmann denies knowledge of any written order to exterminate the Jews. He instead claims that Heydrich communicated this order verbally from Hitler (p. 81).
   
   Eichmann briefly discusses the deal he made with Hungarian Jewish leader Rudolf Kastner, in which nearly 1,700 Jews were eventually freed (p. 211, 255). As the editor describes: "What Eichmann wanted to `straighten out' was a deal which Becher, with Himmler's approval, had made with a Swiss representative of the American Joint Committee. Several hundred Hungarian Jews selected by Dr. Kastner had already arrived, via Bergen-Belsen, in Switzerland, from where they would continue on to Palestine. But the agreed payment in foreign currency had not arrived in Germany." (p. 255). Even more intriguing is Eichmann and his claim of being prepared to free 1 million Jews in exchange for ten thousand trucks (p. 211).



2. This is a hard book to read, but highly recommended. It must have been Eichmann's worst nightmare: to find himself brought to justice by the very people he tried to exterminate. One feels no sympathy for the man; what makes the book so uncomfortable to read is to see him lie and dissemble.
   
   Like the monstrous bully he was, he is unable to accept responsibility or to show any genuine remorse. Rather, he claims to have been a cog in the wheel, to have no responsibility for what happened. One would almost wish he just denied guilt rather than put on this snivelling performance (but then, it is the Holocaust deniers who ought to be forced to read this book because it not only makes it clear what happened, it makes it obvious, to me at least, that Hitler ordered it).The brilliant interrogation of Captain Avner Less of the Israeli police should be read by all law enforcement officers as a way to trap a suspect. Eichmann denies knowledge of a particular matter and then is shown a document on that very subject that he signed. "I can't wriggle out of that one," becomes a refrain. Peculiar little sidelights about the Holocaust pop up. Captain Less asks about Jewish Nazis, for instance (of which there were a few, surprisingly enough) and Eichmann goes through a song and dance about how they had to be sent off to the camps because they were Jews but were isolated from the other prisoners because they were Nazis. Really twisted knowledge.
   
   It was impossible for me to read this book with a lower opinion of Eichmann than I already had, but it does give you insight into how evil can dominate someone who lacks a moral compass.



3. In many works attempting to discuss the minds behind the Nazi Final Solution, the reader is harnessed with the task of sorting facts from assumptions and interpretations that too often color an otherwise accurate book. However, Eichmann Interrogated allows the reader to study the words of one of the most notorious actors of Hitler's plans for genocide and mass murder. While reading the transcripts of Eichmann's interrogations at the hands of Israeli police, I attempted to try and understand what would cause Eichmann, a man who in his earlier years had a fascination for Jewish culture, to turn evil and attempt to destroy a whole race of people. Although the transcripts don't provide an answer to such a complex question, they did provide a means to study Eichmann. Through out the interrogation, Eichmann consistently denied his role in carrying out the Final Solution. Rather than admit to any actual killings of Jews, Eichmann stuck to a story which maintained that he was simply a soldier following orders, and even then, his only task was to ensure that the trains containing the Jews were running accurately. I found it also interesting to read that Eichmann claims to have provided alternatives to the wholesale slaughter of the Jews, such as exportation of all Jews to the African island of Mauritius, or the strangely Zionistic support for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Although the truth about Eichmann and his motivations will never be clear, the transcripts of his interrogation, although possibly filled with lies, provides an interesting historical document for those wishing to learn more about the psychology of the engineers of the Final Solution.



4. Adolf Eichmann was the main character behind the deportation of the jews to concentration and extermination camps during the second world war. With that in mind, one better understands the historic and sociological value of a book made of the transcripts of his interrogation at the hands of the israeli police prior to Eichmann execution at the conclusion of his trial. However several things wich I will now detail diminish the impact of this neverteless important work.
   The first of these diminishing factor is Eichmann himself... Eichmann lies constantly all trough the transcript and try to weasel is way out of most of what he consider to be potentially damming evidence for his trial... Given the man's weak intellect most of his lies are unimaginative and most of the time he doesn't even realize he is not making any sense and denying evidence already backed by numerous witness and written evidence... He doesn't even have the common sense to realise what constitute dammaging evidence and what doesn't and he sometimes argue against or refute very technical details of little importance and yet not realize that by his own previous admission he has already confirmed the most important charges against him. All through the book Eichmann shows himself to be an uninteresting bore of little character or imagination. Totally selfish he constantly blame others for his wrong doings. He is also completely unrepentant (One gets the impression that under the same circunstance Eichmann who do it all over again, as he doesn't even seem to grasp the importance of his part in the holocaust)
   Another factor that raise question about the value of this book is the circumstances in which the transcript were obtained from Eichmann. Even considering the disgusting nature of the character, one must admit that sending secret agent to kidnap him from Argentina (with not respect for the sovereignty of that country)and to bring him to trial on such short notice, trial which ended by Eichmann execution, might raise questions about the impartiality of the israeli authority and the fairness of the procedings. Incidentally, Capt. Avner Less the man who interviewed Eichmann had lost several direct family members to the extermination camps ... So are the extract presented in this book truthfull representation of what really took place in the interogation process? Probably, but one must nevertheless not forget the circumstances in which Eichmann's words were obtained...
   In conclusion, the transcript will be of limited interest to people trying to get a better picture of the holocaust and the role Eichmann played in it. Eichmann's constant lying and droning on and on in his answers leave very little interesting facts and you will get a better picture of the holocaust or the role Eichmann played in it in other books. However this book will be of great interest to anybody interested in knowing and undersanding more of the personality and mind of a man who is responsable for the death of 6 million jews. Reading this book makes one realise the rather unconfortable fact that a man like A. Eichmann is not exceptionnal but rather a very dull, very normal man, the kind of promotion chasing heartless civil servant like there are hundreds in every big city ...



5. The Israeli agents involved in his capture couldn't believe that such an unremarkable man could be the one with the blood of six million Jews on his hands - This book reveals how he could! This is one of the best books I have read in a long time, not (I agree) everyone's cup of tea but definately mine! Once started I couldn't put the thing down. I was locked to it with disbelief at the way Eichmann could rationalise all his actions (almost justify them) and distance himself from the end product of the conveyor-belt he claimed to be....just the transporter of! I know others have written not particularly savoury reviews of this book, but if you are in any way interested in the Holocaust then reading of the bringing to justice of one of it's most notorious perpetrators will be time well spent. Highly recommended...............Fascinating!

No comments about My Gaze Is Turned Inward: Letters 1938-1943 (Jewish Lives).

1 comments about The Smell of Humans: A Memoir of the Holocaust in Hungary.

1. When you see the title and subtitle, you might expect an unrelentingly grim report--so unfortunately familiar from the genre of accounts by Holocaust survivors. Instead, after reading Erno Szep's story a few weeks spent digging trenches in a slave labor camp, you close the book not weary of a cheerless tale, but wishing you could have found out more--especially after Szep returned to Budapest just in time for the Soviet siege and the Nazi/Arrow Cross defense. In a series of very brief episodes, he relates with all the detail he can bear his view of the Jews in Budapest as most of its "able" men first were rounded up, then sent off to work under the sneers and beatings of the Arrow Cross. He conveys vividly the feel of forced labor and little food, the monotony, the damp, and the hunger increasing as their supplies and energy dwindle and the toil takes its toll.

   Unlike some other Hungarian translations of texts, this one by John Batki, a scholar who left Hungary as a teenager, manages to render into very colloquial but never casual English what must be marvelous Magyar prose. Szep's style evidently is cosmopolitan, with a snap and joie de vivre that persists despite his subject matter. Imagine a less taciturn, more convivial counterpart to Primo Levi. My only withholding of a fifth star in the rating: a stereotypically verbose and clumsily experimental preface by Dezso Tandori that reminds me of the worst of translated Hungarian stylists too enamoured of their own cleverness to remember their reader's attention span. Stick with Szep's own "autobiographical statement" and Batki's remarks. How I wish Szep had written much more! (1884-1953)

   Parts of his story shed new light on old events: the process by which were extended, denied, and re-extended passes by the Swedish (although Raoul Wallenberg's not mentioned by name--perhaps postwar Hungarian censorship may have been a factor?) and Spanish embassies; the fate of those who had grown up entirely Christian by birth and belief but had Jewish grandparents; the more recent converts hoping the excape the yellow star; and the printers. In this last vignette, Szep wonders why that largely socialist union, in WWI, allowed its members to produce so much propaganda for the capitalists. If they had simply refused to print the disortions of the ruling class, Szep muses, perhaps war would have been averted. Hmmm.

3 comments about Lucien's Story: A Memoir.

1. A memoir -- A gateway into the world of Lucien leads the reader through the tunnels of his mind as the horrors of the past ricochet into the present. Without sentimentality this story changes the awareness of even the most knowledgeable reader. The presnt is honed by these echoes of the past. Beautifully, albeit adroitly, written, the bones of this experience are clean, sparse and strong. We are helped to understand the unimaginable



2. A memoir -- A gateway into the world of Lucien leads the reader through the tunnels of his mind as the horrors of the past ricochet into the present. Without sentimentality this story changes the awareness of even the most knowledgeable reader. The present is honed by these echoes of the past. Beautifully, albeit adroitly, written, the bones of his experience are clean, sparse and strong. We are helped to understand the unimaginable



3. This is the story of Lucien Duckstein, an 11 year old boy in Paris who is deported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with his mother because they are Jewish. It is also the story of Lucien Duckstein, a sixty year old scientist who eventually comes to deal with the experiences he underwent in Bergen-Belsen and the Drancy internment camp. He explores the price those childhood experiences exacted in his adulthood, especially in his dealings with his wife, children, family and the outside world. He acknowledges the cost of having created a persona which could survive life in the camps. His language is sparse, but eloquent and his pain is evident in the simplicity of his words. This is a short (60page), volume that is uncluttered by the irrelevant, that flows from the start and is stark and frightening in it's descriptions of what it was like to be a French Jew in Paris and later. His use of the present to play off against the past merely highlights the horrors that he experience

1 comments about Doors to Madame Marie.

1. This book had a profound effect on me. I don't totally agree with the first review on this page. Possibly the reviewer should read the book again since he/she seemed to miss the pivotal message woven throughout this book like a fine golden thread in a tapestry.

   The solid footing the author stood on was to keep your heart swept out of insiduous practices like racial and ethnic intolerances that lead to atrocities such as the Holocaust. "Dust doesn't announce itself." she says as she likens our hearts to the apartment house of the next century. Be courteous to one another, follow the Golden Rule, and put this book on your list of books to read. You won't be sorry you did.